Selected podcast episodes on psychology, economics, science, history and culture

Tag: Economic history

Economics Detective Radio | 3 May 2017 | 0h 46m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with historian of innovation Anton Howes about observations from his dataset of >1,000 British innovators during the Industrial Revolution. Innovation appears to be a mindset, spread between interconnected people developing technologies in industries outside their areas of expertise.

The Rubin Report | 30 December 2016 | 1h 25m | Listen Later
Interview with Deirdre McCloskey about her transition from male to female, her career in academia and classical liberalism. Backgrounds the ideas in her Bourgeois series of books, which argue that it was innovation spawned by changing cultural values that sparked the Great Enrichment of the last two hundred years. Interesting throughout.

Context with Brad Harris | 9 January 2019 | 1h 31m | Listen Later | iTunes
Distils the ideas in Why the West Rules – For Now by Ian Morris. Suggests that the interactions of human biology, sociology, and geography reveal a fundamental pattern in history that lets us answer historical questions like why the West rules for now, and what will happen next.

Analysis | 1 June 2014 | 0h 28m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with economic historian Deirdre McCloskey on the role of ideas and attitudes in creating modern prosperity and where our priorities should lie today.

Context with Brad Harris | 12 December 2018 | 0h 53m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization. Interesting discussion of the evidence from pottery, coinage, livestock size and pollution that living standards collapsed with the fall of Rome and the consequent loss of economic and social complexity.

Context with Brad Harris | 10 July 2018 | 0h 32m | Listen Later | iTunes
Review of Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West, by Margaret Jacob. Explains how scientific knowledge became integrated into the culture of Europe through the 1600s and 1700s, and how the different social and political conditions of different European countries influenced the application of science to material prosperity. Insight on why Britain’s distinctive approach to the utility of science enabled it to industrialize generations earlier than any other country.